The Logical Evolution of the Monroe Doctrine

 

In January 1895 the American nation was ready for another war. In his private papers, Teddy Roosevelt noted that a war represented the health of a nation and in 1895 the United States would resolve the British-Venezuela boundary dispute over British Guiana and take Canada at the same time. Complicating matters – or perhaps explaining them, gold had been discovered in the region in the 1880’s.

 

War as an Option of Expansion

 

War was the logical extension of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s blueprint of global expansionism, The Influence of Sea Power in History. President Grover Cleveland presented an ultimatum while the sensationally-minded “yellow” journalists fabricated tales of horrendous abuse, much as they would do over the Cuban revolution.

 

America’s last war was becoming a memory, although veterans abounded as painful reminders that conflict is never kind to the survivors who must learn to live with limbs removed. Business interests opposed war with Britain, needing no crystal ball to predict dire consequences resulting from such an unmatched affray. The financiers and industrialisms blamed, in part, the military establishment which appeared always ready to engineer a war.

 

Finally, the so-called “mugwumps,” reformist Republicans like Carl Schurz and Henry James viewed exceptionalism in terms of global adventurism and jingoist fancies as anathema to the principles of democracy. These men would eventually form the Anti Imperialist League when it became apparent that the Philippines would become a colonial possession of the United States and a prolonged battlefield to test the notions of Anglo-Saxonism.

 

President Cleveland initially offered Britain arbitration, which was rejected. Secretary of State Richard Olney thereupon issued a harsh ultimatum reminding the British that South America was subject to the Monroe Doctrine. “It is because in addition to all other grounds its infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable against any and all other powers.”

 

The Plan of War

 

There was some talk about outfitting private yachts to sail against the mighty British navy which vastly outnumbered the U.S. squadron. No doubt the “test” helped Teddy’s resolution to build more and better warships as soon as he was in a position to affect the outcome. But across the nation, old men dusted off their Civil War uniforms and women’s auxiliaries vowed to do their part. Throughout the season of jingoism, anglophiles fretted.

 

Potential War Shifts to Cuba

 

Talk of war ended as swiftly as it was printed on the front pages of the major newspapers. The conditions had changed. A British squadron sailed for South Africa where it was reported the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, was meddling in what would soon blossom into the full scale Boer War.

 

Roosevelt had watched events in Mexico and Venezuela and in both cases a needless war was averted, much to his disgust. Cuba, however, in a seemingly perennial quest for independence from Spain, one of Europe’s weakest powers, represented a better opportunity and it was here that the “splendid little war” took place following the explosion of the USS Maine.

 

The United States entered the world as a global colonial power, assured of the exceptionalist vision that logically flowed out of Manifest Destiny and the frontier mentality. The British would become long-term allies while the Germans were viewed as meddling huns.

 

References:

 

Charles W. Calhoun, From Bloody Shirt to Full Dinner Pail: The Transformation of Politics and Governance in the Gilded Age (Hill and Wang, 2010)

H. W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (Basic Books, 1997)

Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Push to Empire, 1898 (Little Brown and Company, 2010)

Adam Smith, The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era, Volume 6, (Penguin, 1990)

Warren Zimmermann, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2002)

Published May 13, 2012 in Decoded Past by M.Streich. copyright